11 ms·

Former Lyft eng here. From my vantage point, as an industry, we're nowhere near where we should be on the safety side. The tech companies are developing driving

Former Lyft eng here. From my vantage point, as an industry, we're nowhere near where we should be on the safety side. The tech companies are developing driving tech privately instead of openly. Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Even when a human operator has his hands hovering 1 inch off the steering wheel and his foot on the brake, if the car decides to gas it and swerve into a person, it is probably too late for the human crash test driver to overtake. This is going to keep happening. The counterargument FOR this is that it is overall a good idea for the transportation system if the number of crashes & deaths is statistically less than human operated cars. I see this as the collision of what's possible with what's feasible and that we are years away from any of this being close to a good idea. :( Very sad for the family and friends.

c22 9y ago
I strongly agree with this sentiment. If this technology is going to be tested on the public then all the datasets from these vehicles should be openly shared and development should be done cooperatively. Let the market decide winners based on metrics like cabin comfort and leasing terms rather than odds of causing grievous injury.
decacorn 9y ago
The counterargument you propose is invalid because it would be DECADES until >90% of the entire current automotive market is converted to fully autonomous. MEANING cars currently on the road either being retrofitted or completely removed from road and replaced by an AV. So we are all in a lose-lose. I'm anticipating severe backlash from Congress this week, if not today.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  because it does not require handing over control to the car to get a good test. the cars can simply record their decision making process and immediately flag all exceptions, which includes hitting anything. It would be very interesting to see all exceptions because it is to be expected all these systems must fail. we don't need active testing on our streets. automakers would have dared to test ABS or "safety" systems in such a manner for the simple reason of liability.
- dang 9y ago
  Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
floatrock 9y ago
> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Interesting way of putting it. Kinda echos the "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" sentiment from the financial crisis.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. The ironic part here is that Uber already has a strong reputation for skirting the law and not caring. Their response and the following audits will be worth following.
  - owly 9y ago
    What if you already have a sh*t reputation like UBER?
  - LethargicStud 9y ago
    > Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Based on the past year and what I hear about Uber's growth[0], I'd argue that their reputation and their valuation are quite uncorrelated, but it's hard to know the truth. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-massive-turmoil-ubers-growth-remains-strong/#15a98fa3c764 https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-...
    - scotty79 9y ago
      > This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Rather this assumes reputation costs times risk of having those costs while undertaking some action is comparable to gain from this action.
amelius 9y ago
Perhaps companies need to test their safety devices first. I.e., first prove that their LiDAR correctly identifies pedestrians, cyclists, etc. From there, build test-vehicles with redundancy, e.g. with multiple LiDAR devices. Then prove that the vehicles actually stop in case of emergency. And only then actually hit the road. Of course, the US department of transportation should have set up proper certification for all of this. They could have easily done so because they can arbitrarily choose the certification costs.
- scdc 9y ago
  if we wait for the gov to set up a certification for this, we'll delay the whole industry 10 years.
  - xtian 9y ago
    And?
    - megy 9y ago
      Cost 1000s if not millions of lives. You understand over a million people die every year due driving? They system is not working.
      - danso 9y ago
        A "million" people do not die in the U.S. every year from driving. Not even close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... Not that 37,000+ is a great number, but I don't think many of the detractors here are arguing that Uber et. al have a perfect record. Just that it's possible that progress is being made in a more reckless way than necessary. Just because space flight is inherently difficult and risky and ambitious doesn't mean we don't investigate the possibly preventable factors behind the Challenger disaster. edit: You seem to be referencing the worldwide estimate. Fair, but we're not even close to having self-driven cars in the most afflicted countries. Nevermind AI, we're not even close to having clean potable water worldwide, and diarrhea-related deaths outnumber road accident deaths according to WHO: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/
dgregd 9y ago
My old comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15076613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15076613 So much talk about LIDAR and other sensors. Why nobody talks about obvious idea of Road Object Message Bus? ROMB is a protocol where each road object (a traffic light, a sign, a car, a bicycle, etc.) transmits info about itself. A car could broadcast its direction vector, intention to turn, any non ROMB moving object it sees. A traffic light could broadcast current state and when it is going to change. That information would greatly enhance overall security, especially during rain and snow conditions, when even LIDAR fails. Self-driving is such important (just after eliminating combustion engines) that we could upgrade existing cars with cheap ROMB boxes. Vehicle GPS tracking system costs about $30. ROMB box would cost about $60. Let's say that from 2027 all cars have to have a ROMB box to enter a downtown ... Let's say your car ROMB received info about the white truck, while your car cameras and vision recognition systems see just a cloud and any truck in 100 m range. ROMB purpose is not to replace cameras or LIDARs, but to extend gathered info.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't paste old comments into new conversations. Especially not twice in the same thread!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dgregd 9y ago
    I deleted the old comment because I thought it was connected to another deleted comment. You can check your web server logs and see that I deleted the old in the same time I posted the new one. And I think that the comment is very relevant to the current discussion. It talks about how to increase the safety of self-driving cars. Please answer why it is not relevant in your opinion. Because from my point of view it looks like you don't read it before downvoting. BTW HN is not complaint with GDPR. After some time I cannot delete my comments.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
spyder 9y ago
Even worse: There are people who test their DIY self-driving hacks on public roads: https://youtu.be/GzrHNI6eCHo?t=100 https://youtu.be/GzrHNI6eCHo?t=100 Using https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot , which is cool but not on public roads.
- icc97 9y ago
  That is indeed reckless, but that guy is testing open source self-driving technology. Given that all the main car companies are keeping their technology private I don't see how open-source systems are supposed to keep up without people doing this. I think you can also contrast this to the many more people who decide to drink alcohol and then drive.
  - beagle3 9y ago
    Unless things have changed, all the important parts aren't open source -- neither the vision nor the decision pipeline.
    - icc97 9y ago
      https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot this is the bit that needs training as far as I'm aware.
  - majos 9y ago
    > I think you can also contrast this to the many more people who decide to drink alcohol and then drive. Sure, but drinking (more than a little) and driving is already illegal, so they're not exactly comparable.
- merb 9y ago
  in germany you would get punished for doing something like that. (well somebody would need to catch you first, of course)
chimeracoder 9y ago
> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? Because at some point, it's literally not possible to test something that's ultimately intended for use on public roads anywhere but public roads. Or, to put it in terms that would be more familiar to developers, "you can test all you want in QA, but prod is the ultimate test of whether your code really works". As mentioned downthread, the problem here is that Arizona basically gave companies full leeway, without having to demonstrate that they had done sufficient tests internally before putting the cards on public roads. Apparently they're not even required to report data on accidents to the state, which is absurd. I wouldn't be surprised if Uber were ultimately found to be cutting corners, but Arizona is also responsible for rushing to allow self-driving cars on their roads without doing their own due diligence first.
- davewritescode 9y ago
  This is what it means when politicians say they’re cutting red tape. They’re letting industry do whatever the fuck they want at the expense of everyone.
- fudged71 9y ago
  When it is deemed necessary to test the vehicles on public roads after they have shown to be mostly safe, ALL of these vehicles should have flashing lights like any emergency vehicle. I'm stunned that when I drive in Texas, there don't seem to be regulations over which vehicles can have flashing lights and with which colors. Yet in these other cities you have experimental robots that are designed to blend in with other cars as much as possible. NO! Make them stick out.
- dkonofalski 9y ago
  Which is hilarious to me because AZ is the bastion of those "Don't treat on me" stickers and all this anti-regulation sentiment...until someone gets killed by a lack of regulations and then everyone wants to lock everything down and blame the government for not doing their due diligence.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? My thoughts exactly. It is wrong. We have a chance to do this properly, openly and together, but instead our governments are letting private companies put our lives in danger.
debt 9y ago
That's why many unnamed companies in the self-driving space are testing solely on enormous closed-off tracks in the South Bay.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ivoras 9y ago
When regular cars first appeared, were they not tested "live" immediately? And yes, there was FUD even back then, and in parts of the world a backslash which resulted in sometimes silly safety rules. The largest real difference seems to be the speed of communication nowadays, the rate at which public opinion can be manufactured and globally spread.
- soperj 9y ago
  And a countless number of people have been killed.
- CAT0 9y ago
  When regular cars first appeard vehicles had to be led by a pedestrian waving a red flag or carrying a lantern to warn bystanders of the vehicle's approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws
- davewritescode 9y ago
  Real cars were an evolution of an existing technology (the carriage). We replaced a horse with an engine and a steering wheel. In this case have a machine replacing a human and using non deterministic algorithms to do so. Automated driving ONLY makes sense on specific, well mapped, sensor enabled, pedestrian free roads. Let’s focus on that use case before we let these things take over our towns and cities.
  - YarickR 9y ago
    Such roads exist today, they are utilising two steel rails and are generally named railroads.
osrec 9y ago
You are right on the money. Also, why must self driving cars be on the roads with human drivers at all? We're an unpredictable bunch, and lives are at stake! We should simplify the problem domain and keep self driving cars away from other human drivers and pedestrians (even once the technology reaches a very advanced stage). When they are actually ready to go mainstream, then think about putting them on roads with humans (and even then, dedicated routes and infrastructure specifically for self driving cars may be the safer way to go).
andrepd 9y ago
>Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Because the for profit company has a say in government and lawmaking, the person getting run over doesn't.
SilasX 9y ago
>Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? Some phase of testing will necessarily be of public roads. The fact that they started that phase prematurely doesn't somehow mean that "private for profit companies" should never test on public roads. Boeing tests new airplanes in the public airspace too, over public areas.
- rpmcb 9y ago
  Boeing certainly tests in public airspace, but only as part of a standardized certification process overseen by the US government - a process and set of regulations that are written in blood. Uber abides by no such testing standardization.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    Which would be a different standard than the one I was criticizing.
arkh 9y ago
I'm for a middle-of-the-road way of doing things at first: make some highway lanes for autonomous cars only. Separate those lane physically. Remove the speed limit there to encourage people to get cars which can use those lanes. Implement a way for the highway operator to affect the cars on it: make way for emergency vehicles, adapt to infos the operator can aggregate and transmit, change the speed of cars to the slowest one around etc. Once the majority of people have self driven cars and those have been proven in this controled environment you can think about allowing them on open roads. Or not. Or adapt those open roads to what self driven cars need.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  > make some highway lanes for autonomous cars only. Separate those lane physically sure, makes sense to me. But God, that would cost a fortune.
  - dkonofalski 9y ago
    What do you mean? Everyone making these comments is fairly certain that this is a completely trivial endeavor.
  - arkh 9y ago
    > But God, that would cost a fortune. It would. Like an infrastructural job. I mean, it would be like railways for individual trains. But that's kinda-sorta the job expected from government and what taxes are for: paying for things the individual would have problems doing.
- smogcutter 9y ago
  GM's "super cruise" fills the exact role you're describing aside from removing the speed limit, and aside from the billions of dollars in public infrastructure spending and increased traffic for everyone else.
megy 9y ago
> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? I mean, this is the way cars have always operated. It is somehow any different to let them "test" there brake system, there acceleration systems? Car companies have always been able to do whatever they want, who cares about the deaths. For some reason, when it comes to roads, we all just accept a certain amount of deaths each year. Over a million people are killed every year around the world, up to 40,000 in the US alone. That is acceptable according to every car driver.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Car companies have (multiple) private tracks that they stress test their vehicles on. Car companies are extremely risk averse. Public road testing for something safety related is going to be very late stage in development/testing, if at all.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    Some level of integration, testing always has to meet the real world. Maybe in IT we would call a "canary" instead of a test. I once had a colleague who had been a test driver for a major European car firm. His job was to drive cars around in real traffic. Self-driving cars need this all the more, since most of the hard and scary stuff is the integration of many systems and how they deal with unexpected scenarios. And worse still -- in a traditional car, you had an expert test-driver like my friend who could, say, take evasive action if the brakes didn't work. But in these cars, the driver is the system-under test.
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Google at least from what I read has all of that.
  - megy 9y ago
    > Car companies have (multiple) private tracks that they stress test their vehicles on. Car companies are extremely risk averse. Public road testing for something safety related is going to be very late stage in development/testing, if at all. Yes, and so do these guys. They might be somewhat risk averse, but lets not pretend they have in the past made sacrifices that have cost lives (Pinto, etc...) and there are constant recalls going on.
belorn 9y ago
The FLOSS side has argued for openness in critical systems for ages. Medical devices such as pacemakers, air plane systems, automatic breaks on cars, voting machines, and the list just goes on. If the device get hacked or has any bugs then people will likely die (except for the voting machine), but the code is kept private even for those running in devices which literally gets operated into your chest and which a person has to trust with their own life. Governments all over the world seems to be very much against the idea to require that such critical code is made openly for the sake of safety, as that would leak the oh so important trade secrets.
wuliwong 9y ago
I can't imagine you would want any major new transportation technologies released without being tested on public roads?
- wang_li 9y ago
  There shouldn't be any testing on public roads until the executives and engineers are willing to put on blindfolds and spend six hours running back and forth across a track on which a hundred of their autonomous cars are maintaining 60 MPH in both directions.
overgard 9y ago
To be fair though, it's not exactly like we're where we need to be at on the safety side from a human standpoint. I'd take my chances with a robo-car over a 16 year old texting any day.
oh_sigh 9y ago
It is simple: Tech companies are allowed to test their systems on public roads because the communities/states have given them permission to do so(with restrictions like roads allowable, max/min speed allowable, safety driver present behind wheel, etc).

c22 9y ago

I strongly agree with this sentiment. If this technology is going to be tested on the public then all the datasets from these vehicles should be openly shared and development should be done cooperatively. Let the market decide winners based on metrics like cabin comfort and leasing terms rather than odds of causing grievous injury.

decacorn 9y ago

The counterargument you propose is invalid because it would be DECADES until >90% of the entire current automotive market is converted to fully autonomous. MEANING cars currently on the road either being retrofitted or completely removed from road and replaced by an AV. So we are all in a lose-lose. I'm anticipating severe backlash from Congress this week, if not today.

Shivetya 9y ago
because it does not require handing over control to the car to get a good test. the cars can simply record their decision making process and immediately flag all exceptions, which includes hitting anything. It would be very interesting to see all exceptions because it is to be expected all these systems must fail. we don't need active testing on our streets. automakers would have dared to test ABS or "safety" systems in such a manner for the simple reason of liability.
dang 9y ago
Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

floatrock 9y ago

> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Interesting way of putting it. Kinda echos the "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" sentiment from the financial crisis.

bduerst 9y ago
Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. The ironic part here is that Uber already has a strong reputation for skirting the law and not caring. Their response and the following audits will be worth following.
- owly 9y ago
  What if you already have a sh*t reputation like UBER?
- LethargicStud 9y ago
  > Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads. This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Based on the past year and what I hear about Uber's growth[0], I'd argue that their reputation and their valuation are quite uncorrelated, but it's hard to know the truth. 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-massive-turmoil-ubers-growth-remains-strong/#15a98fa3c764 https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-...
  - scotty79 9y ago
    > This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Rather this assumes reputation costs times risk of having those costs while undertaking some action is comparable to gain from this action.

amelius 9y ago

Perhaps companies need to test their safety devices first. I.e., first prove that their LiDAR correctly identifies pedestrians, cyclists, etc. From there, build test-vehicles with redundancy, e.g. with multiple LiDAR devices. Then prove that the vehicles actually stop in case of emergency. And only then actually hit the road. Of course, the US department of transportation should have set up proper certification for all of this. They could have easily done so because they can arbitrarily choose the certification costs.

scdc 9y ago
if we wait for the gov to set up a certification for this, we'll delay the whole industry 10 years.
- xtian 9y ago
  And?
  - megy 9y ago
    Cost 1000s if not millions of lives. You understand over a million people die every year due driving? They system is not working.
    - danso 9y ago
      A "million" people do not die in the U.S. every year from driving. Not even close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... Not that 37,000+ is a great number, but I don't think many of the detractors here are arguing that Uber et. al have a perfect record. Just that it's possible that progress is being made in a more reckless way than necessary. Just because space flight is inherently difficult and risky and ambitious doesn't mean we don't investigate the possibly preventable factors behind the Challenger disaster. edit: You seem to be referencing the worldwide estimate. Fair, but we're not even close to having self-driven cars in the most afflicted countries. Nevermind AI, we're not even close to having clean potable water worldwide, and diarrhea-related deaths outnumber road accident deaths according to WHO: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/

dgregd 9y ago

My old comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15076613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15076613 So much talk about LIDAR and other sensors. Why nobody talks about obvious idea of Road Object Message Bus? ROMB is a protocol where each road object (a traffic light, a sign, a car, a bicycle, etc.) transmits info about itself. A car could broadcast its direction vector, intention to turn, any non ROMB moving object it sees. A traffic light could broadcast current state and when it is going to change. That information would greatly enhance overall security, especially during rain and snow conditions, when even LIDAR fails. Self-driving is such important (just after eliminating combustion engines) that we could upgrade existing cars with cheap ROMB boxes. Vehicle GPS tracking system costs about $30. ROMB box would cost about $60. Let's say that from 2027 all cars have to have a ROMB box to enter a downtown ... Let's say your car ROMB received info about the white truck, while your car cameras and vision recognition systems see just a cloud and any truck in 100 m range. ROMB purpose is not to replace cameras or LIDARs, but to extend gathered info.

dang 9y ago
Please don't paste old comments into new conversations. Especially not twice in the same thread!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dgregd 9y ago
  I deleted the old comment because I thought it was connected to another deleted comment. You can check your web server logs and see that I deleted the old in the same time I posted the new one. And I think that the comment is very relevant to the current discussion. It talks about how to increase the safety of self-driving cars. Please answer why it is not relevant in your opinion. Because from my point of view it looks like you don't read it before downvoting. BTW HN is not complaint with GDPR. After some time I cannot delete my comments.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

spyder 9y ago

Even worse: There are people who test their DIY self-driving hacks on public roads: https://youtu.be/GzrHNI6eCHo?t=100 https://youtu.be/GzrHNI6eCHo?t=100 Using https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot , which is cool but not on public roads.

icc97 9y ago
That is indeed reckless, but that guy is testing open source self-driving technology. Given that all the main car companies are keeping their technology private I don't see how open-source systems are supposed to keep up without people doing this. I think you can also contrast this to the many more people who decide to drink alcohol and then drive.
- beagle3 9y ago
  Unless things have changed, all the important parts aren't open source -- neither the vision nor the decision pipeline.
  - icc97 9y ago
    https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot this is the bit that needs training as far as I'm aware.
- majos 9y ago
  > I think you can also contrast this to the many more people who decide to drink alcohol and then drive. Sure, but drinking (more than a little) and driving is already illegal, so they're not exactly comparable.
merb 9y ago
in germany you would get punished for doing something like that. (well somebody would need to catch you first, of course)

chimeracoder 9y ago

> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? Because at some point, it's literally not possible to test something that's ultimately intended for use on public roads anywhere but public roads. Or, to put it in terms that would be more familiar to developers, "you can test all you want in QA, but prod is the ultimate test of whether your code really works". As mentioned downthread, the problem here is that Arizona basically gave companies full leeway, without having to demonstrate that they had done sufficient tests internally before putting the cards on public roads. Apparently they're not even required to report data on accidents to the state, which is absurd. I wouldn't be surprised if Uber were ultimately found to be cutting corners, but Arizona is also responsible for rushing to allow self-driving cars on their roads without doing their own due diligence first.

davewritescode 9y ago
This is what it means when politicians say they’re cutting red tape. They’re letting industry do whatever the fuck they want at the expense of everyone.
fudged71 9y ago
When it is deemed necessary to test the vehicles on public roads after they have shown to be mostly safe, ALL of these vehicles should have flashing lights like any emergency vehicle. I'm stunned that when I drive in Texas, there don't seem to be regulations over which vehicles can have flashing lights and with which colors. Yet in these other cities you have experimental robots that are designed to blend in with other cars as much as possible. NO! Make them stick out.
dkonofalski 9y ago
Which is hilarious to me because AZ is the bastion of those "Don't treat on me" stickers and all this anti-regulation sentiment...until someone gets killed by a lack of regulations and then everyone wants to lock everything down and blame the government for not doing their due diligence.

cup-of-tea 9y ago

> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? My thoughts exactly. It is wrong. We have a chance to do this properly, openly and together, but instead our governments are letting private companies put our lives in danger.

debt 9y ago

That's why many unnamed companies in the self-driving space are testing solely on enormous closed-off tracks in the South Bay.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ivoras 9y ago

When regular cars first appeared, were they not tested "live" immediately? And yes, there was FUD even back then, and in parts of the world a backslash which resulted in sometimes silly safety rules. The largest real difference seems to be the speed of communication nowadays, the rate at which public opinion can be manufactured and globally spread.

soperj 9y ago
And a countless number of people have been killed.
CAT0 9y ago
When regular cars first appeard vehicles had to be led by a pedestrian waving a red flag or carrying a lantern to warn bystanders of the vehicle's approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws
davewritescode 9y ago
Real cars were an evolution of an existing technology (the carriage). We replaced a horse with an engine and a steering wheel. In this case have a machine replacing a human and using non deterministic algorithms to do so. Automated driving ONLY makes sense on specific, well mapped, sensor enabled, pedestrian free roads. Let’s focus on that use case before we let these things take over our towns and cities.
- YarickR 9y ago
  Such roads exist today, they are utilising two steel rails and are generally named railroads.

osrec 9y ago

You are right on the money. Also, why must self driving cars be on the roads with human drivers at all? We're an unpredictable bunch, and lives are at stake! We should simplify the problem domain and keep self driving cars away from other human drivers and pedestrians (even once the technology reaches a very advanced stage). When they are actually ready to go mainstream, then think about putting them on roads with humans (and even then, dedicated routes and infrastructure specifically for self driving cars may be the safer way to go).

andrepd 9y ago

>Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? The public is at serious risk of getting run over by hacked and buggy guidance / decision system. Because the for profit company has a say in government and lawmaking, the person getting run over doesn't.

SilasX 9y ago

>Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? Some phase of testing will necessarily be of public roads. The fact that they started that phase prematurely doesn't somehow mean that "private for profit companies" should never test on public roads. Boeing tests new airplanes in the public airspace too, over public areas.

rpmcb 9y ago
Boeing certainly tests in public airspace, but only as part of a standardized certification process overseen by the US government - a process and set of regulations that are written in blood. Uber abides by no such testing standardization.
- SilasX 9y ago
  Which would be a different standard than the one I was criticizing.

arkh 9y ago

I'm for a middle-of-the-road way of doing things at first: make some highway lanes for autonomous cars only. Separate those lane physically. Remove the speed limit there to encourage people to get cars which can use those lanes. Implement a way for the highway operator to affect the cars on it: make way for emergency vehicles, adapt to infos the operator can aggregate and transmit, change the speed of cars to the slowest one around etc. Once the majority of people have self driven cars and those have been proven in this controled environment you can think about allowing them on open roads. Or not. Or adapt those open roads to what self driven cars need.

EADGBE 9y ago
> make some highway lanes for autonomous cars only. Separate those lane physically sure, makes sense to me. But God, that would cost a fortune.
- dkonofalski 9y ago
  What do you mean? Everyone making these comments is fairly certain that this is a completely trivial endeavor.
- arkh 9y ago
  > But God, that would cost a fortune. It would. Like an infrastructural job. I mean, it would be like railways for individual trains. But that's kinda-sorta the job expected from government and what taxes are for: paying for things the individual would have problems doing.
smogcutter 9y ago
GM's "super cruise" fills the exact role you're describing aside from removing the speed limit, and aside from the billions of dollars in public infrastructure spending and increased traffic for everyone else.

megy 9y ago

> Why can a private for profit company "test" their systems on the public roads? I mean, this is the way cars have always operated. It is somehow any different to let them "test" there brake system, there acceleration systems? Car companies have always been able to do whatever they want, who cares about the deaths. For some reason, when it comes to roads, we all just accept a certain amount of deaths each year. Over a million people are killed every year around the world, up to 40,000 in the US alone. That is acceptable according to every car driver.

hkmurakami 9y ago
Car companies have (multiple) private tracks that they stress test their vehicles on. Car companies are extremely risk averse. Public road testing for something safety related is going to be very late stage in development/testing, if at all.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  Some level of integration, testing always has to meet the real world. Maybe in IT we would call a "canary" instead of a test. I once had a colleague who had been a test driver for a major European car firm. His job was to drive cars around in real traffic. Self-driving cars need this all the more, since most of the hard and scary stuff is the integration of many systems and how they deal with unexpected scenarios. And worse still -- in a traditional car, you had an expert test-driver like my friend who could, say, take evasive action if the brakes didn't work. But in these cars, the driver is the system-under test.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Google at least from what I read has all of that.
- megy 9y ago
  > Car companies have (multiple) private tracks that they stress test their vehicles on. Car companies are extremely risk averse. Public road testing for something safety related is going to be very late stage in development/testing, if at all. Yes, and so do these guys. They might be somewhat risk averse, but lets not pretend they have in the past made sacrifices that have cost lives (Pinto, etc...) and there are constant recalls going on.

belorn 9y ago

The FLOSS side has argued for openness in critical systems for ages. Medical devices such as pacemakers, air plane systems, automatic breaks on cars, voting machines, and the list just goes on. If the device get hacked or has any bugs then people will likely die (except for the voting machine), but the code is kept private even for those running in devices which literally gets operated into your chest and which a person has to trust with their own life. Governments all over the world seems to be very much against the idea to require that such critical code is made openly for the sake of safety, as that would leak the oh so important trade secrets.

wuliwong 9y ago

I can't imagine you would want any major new transportation technologies released without being tested on public roads?

wang_li 9y ago
There shouldn't be any testing on public roads until the executives and engineers are willing to put on blindfolds and spend six hours running back and forth across a track on which a hundred of their autonomous cars are maintaining 60 MPH in both directions.

overgard 9y ago

To be fair though, it's not exactly like we're where we need to be at on the safety side from a human standpoint. I'd take my chances with a robo-car over a 16 year old texting any day.

oh_sigh 9y ago

It is simple: Tech companies are allowed to test their systems on public roads because the communities/states have given them permission to do so(with restrictions like roads allowable, max/min speed allowable, safety driver present behind wheel, etc).